For example, in Vietnam, according to an IELTS Tutor Laura (not a real name) and her students, British Council scores tend to be at least 0.5 or 1.0 lower than those of IDP. According to some of Laura’s students, IDP favors students who have taken the IDP IELTS preparation course by giving them higher speaking and writing grades. Laura thinks that this could also be due to the fact that students feel more comfortable with the examiners they already know, especially during the speaking test.

Laura’s friends also said that IDP’s reading questions seemed more straightforward; the students felt they were easier than the Cambridge past papers and practice tests. On the other hand, she personally took the exam at the British Council and felt absolutely no bias on the examiner’s side – but she hadn’t had the chance to compare it to IDP.

So there you go, people in India and Vietnam think that IDP gives easier exams than the British Council does – especially if you participate in a preparation course.

In India, I had a chance to appear at both British council and IDP centres. My observation is – Test is the same. – British council conducts the exams in a more professional manner. This means your registration process is very smooth, you receive a hall ticket with all information in advance, The exam starts on time, very less time is wasted between different modules, exam staff is very friendly. – At IDP (planet Edu in India)the processes are less systematic, registration information is neither sent to email address nor to the postal address, the total time spent at the exam venue is more, speaking venue is not very comfortable(There was no proper toilet room where I attended), expressions of the staff is unfriendly and bland. – On the other Hand I can see that more candidates prefer the IDP, maybe because there is a feeling that they tend to award marginally higher in Writing and Speaking. But this did not happen in my case. I think it depends on the examiner rather than the testing partner. Also, to some extent more time between modules helps to relax. In my case at IDP speaking the examiner was very dull while at British council a more friendly approach was adopted. – Overall, I would say No major difference. – On top of this, I believe a minimum preparation of 2 weeks (40 hours) is required and do not neglect any section.